"Oh, I do hope you can!" sighed the fairy thing with the curls down her back and the eyes like the sky.
That settled it for John. This plank was coming off. Nevertheless, there was a pause while he mopped his brow and considered. The result of these considerations was to fall back for reinforcement on two cobbles of unequal size chosen from the gutter, the larger of which he used as a hammer while the smaller served as a wedge, till, with a final wrench, the plank came free.
"A hairpin?" queried John of the sky blue eyes.
"I have not come to hairpins yet," blushed the teacher of the infant class.
John remembered the buttonhook on his key ring, and after a few moments of vigorous attack with that humble instrument the bolt shot accommodatingly to one side and the door swung open.
"Thank you so much!" exclaimed the blue eyes, though the red lips of pliant sixteen said never a word, but framed themselves in a very pretty smile.
John acknowledged the smile with one of his broadest. At the same time, he reflected that Miss Helen's failure to regard as seriously unusual either the barred door or its violent opening was significant of the state to which affairs in the little church had come; and it was with a grim sense of duty well performed that the big man followed the trooping children into the chapel and looked about him.
The building was small, yet somehow it appeared larger inside than out. The utmost simplicity marked its furnishings. The seats were divided by two aisles into a central block of sittings and two side blocks. The pulpit was a mere elevated platform at one side, flanked by lower platforms, one of which supported a cabinet organ. The dull red carpet upon the floor was dreary looking; but the walls and ceilings were neatly white, giving a suggestion of lightness and cheer quite out of harmony with the circumstances under which John had entered it.
The twenty or more children massed themselves, as if by habit, upon the front seats, and presently, with Helen at the organ, Hampstead had them singing lustily one song after another, while the size of the audience increased by occasional stragglers until, during the fourth song, two women appeared, each rather breathless, and one with unmistakable evidences of having got hurriedly into her clothes. John felt the eyes of the women upon him suspiciously, and noticed that neither spoke to the other, and that they took seats on opposite sides of the church.